


fistful of silence

by moonstruckmidnight



Series: shadow triad 2.0 [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Eye Enucleation, Eye Trauma, Gen, Medical Inaccuracies, Sisterly bonding, Whumpfic, look there's no way cass actually pulled that off so we're pretending, this canon has no room for reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26743705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstruckmidnight/pseuds/moonstruckmidnight
Summary: Sisterly bonding.
Relationships: Cassiopeia Du Couteau & Katarina Du Couteau
Series: shadow triad 2.0 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946737
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	fistful of silence

**Author's Note:**

> this is an au, so there are definite differences from everyone’s lore. the main differences for this particular story: cassiopeia is the older sister, and marcus du couteau comes back semi-often with katarina after they leave shurima for noxus. in general? i’m fucking with timelines for Aesthetic and my own satisfaction.
> 
> look. this fic? fucking whumps. be careful.
> 
> trigger warning for: graphic eye trauma, implied child abuse and neglect.

Cassiopeia hasn’t seen her father in months, there is blood all over her hands, and Katarina is not crying.

The not crying is simultaneously alarming and comforting--if Katarina started crying, it’d be harder to treat the slash over her eye. It’s weeping black in the red light on the nightstand, and if it didn’t mean that Cassiopeia would have to take her hands from pressing Katarina’s eye into her socket, she would turn the lights on.

But Katarina is not crying. She’s thirteen, and her eye was almost scratched out, and she’s not crying.

She didn’t come home with their father, either. The General du Couteau hasn’t been home since he left for Noxus five months ago. He had taken Katarina with him.

And then Cassiopeia had come downstairs for a glass of water, only to find Katarina’s unmoving, crumpled form on the lobby floor, a puddle of black growing around her head.

“It’s okay,” Cassiopeia whispers. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Katarina remains still, silent. Cassiopeia isn’t sure if she even heard her. She isn’t sure if she’s glad for that--Katarina has always had a knack for discerning lies; their mother’s knack. And her mother is not here either. She’s doing something with the Black Rose, and Cassiopeia is alone, only she’s not alone, because her baby sister is bleeding on her and she doesn’t know how to make this okay.

Cassiopeia tilts Katarina’s face to the dull red light from the wall sconces, pulls up her eyelid. The score mark goes all the way through it, under it, into the eye. Katarina exhales sharply through her nose, but there’s no other reaction. There’s liquid dripping onto her fingers, and Cassiopeia can’t help the flashbacks to anatomy textbooks and dissections as she looks at it. Blood mingles with a clear fluid, slipping down her fingers.

Reflexive tears, red-black blood, thicker liquid of the humors. Aqueous, vitreous.

She’s read about them, squished them out of cow eyes and lamb eyes, but this is her sister. She has her sister’s humors on her fingers.

Nausea curdles in the pit of her stomach. Cassiopeia swallows with a dry mouth.

“Okay. Okay,” she says to herself. Katarina’s breathing flutters against the skin of Cassiopeia’s wrist.

Her little sister might die.

Her next breath rattles in her throat. “Katarina, don’t you dare die on me.”

Silence. Cassiopeia swallows again, blinks a few times, and realizes what she has to do.

“Katarina,” she says, and her voice is calm in a way she wishes she feels. “I need to remove the eyeball. If I don’t, it might get infected.”

Katarina shudders harshly, breath hissing out of her. It’s the most she’s moved since Cassiopeia found her.

“...do you have to?” she asks, and her voice is quiet, plaintive, begging. “The General…”

Cassiopeia wets her lips, suddenly conscious of her heart slamming in her ribcage. The General. Katarina is the General’s favorite, Marcus du Couteau’s favorite, because she fights like him, runs like him, _smiles_ like him even at thirteen. If she loses her eye…

(Because even with Katarina, his favored daughter, the prodigy, that’s all he wants to be to them. General du Couteau. And they may be children but they are always soldiers first.)

Well. They’ll have to figure it out.

“We’re the du Couteaus,” Cassiopeia answers, brushing Katarina’s cheek gently. “I’m sure there’s somewhere that’ll make magic eye prosthetics. Zaun has a bunch of crazy inventors, they’ll come up with something if we throw enough money at them.”

They both know that the General will not spend money on an asset he believes will waste it. Cassiopeia just hopes that Katarina has proved herself enough to earn his mercy.

“...yeah,” Katarina says, barely more than a whisper. “Help me, Cass.”

And Cass, hands shaking, eyes blurring, does.

-

(There are a list of things that Cassiopeia wants to forget. Is trying to forget. Cannot forget.)

(The force it took to remove her sister’s eye.)

(The sound of scissors struggling to cut through an optic nerve.)

(Katarina’s cries of pain, gasps for breath, sobs barely muffled by her hand over her mouth.)

(Her free hand scrabbling against Cassiopeia’s gloved wrist.)

(The weight of the eye in her hand, when it was done.)

(The way it leaked.)

(The socket.)

(Katarina’s silence.)

-

(Then:

_Don’t let me die, Cass.)_

_-_

_(I don’t want to die, Cass.)_

-

(There is a list of things that Cassiopeia does not want to forget. Is incapable of forgetting. Will not forget.)

(The taste of fury on her tongue, down her spine, through her veins.)

(The knowledge that the General has only been a du Couteau when it never mattered.)

(The promise to take him down.)

-

Katarina doesn’t let her leave, when Cassiopeia sets her down on her bed.

Her left hand holds Cassiopeia’s right wrist, just resting there, too weak to really keep her in place. Cassiopeia doesn’t move, regardless.

“Yeah?” Her voice takes a couple false starts before it comes through. Katarina’s visible eye is closed, the other one hidden under bandages. Her face is towards Cassiopeia.

“...I’m scared.”

Katarina’s hand is trembling around her wrist. Cassiopeia takes a breath.

“I’ll take care of it,” she promises into the dark room. “I’ll fix this.”

Her baby sister makes a noise under her breath, soft and weak. 

_(I’m scared, too.)_

“I’ll fix this,” she says, one more time, a benediction, a plea. Katarina says nothing. Does nothing. Cassiopeia takes a breath. “Just… go to sleep.”

Silence.

Katarina’s hand falls from Cassiopeia’s wrist.

Cassiopeia leaves.

She needs to talk to her mother.


End file.
